Archive for December, 2013

Recently I wanted to refresh the MySQL part of my knowledge base. Previously I worked with SQL consultants in building a ticket processing system at Bridgecom International. During that time coding became familiar and eventually became a foray into other ventures. So an opportunity presented itself, getting reacquainted seemed easy enough. Bridgecom had its own in-house development tools and it was a little easier. I set out to get a more complete picture and fill in the gaps in the patchwork of my self-teaching.

Looking for a path to follow I went to Udemy. Udemy is an online learning platform that allows instructors to host courses. The site was launched by Eren Bali, Oktay Caglar, and Gagan Biyani in 2010. I’d already taken an Operations Management course with Professor Gad Allon of the Kellogg School Management, Northwestern University. There was great interaction and and enjoyable concept exploration. J Peter Anlyan’s 4 Simple Leadership Tools for Every Team Member is on my plate along with Beginner PHP and MySQL tutorial and MySQL Database for Beginners. With the former it started out in unfamiliar territory – XAMPP.

According to Wikipedia, XAMPP is a free and open source cross-platform web server solution stack package, consisting mainly of the Apache HTTP Server, MySQL database, and interpreters for scripts written in the PHP and Perl. programming languages. Of course the instructor started in the middle of things – XAMPP already configured. In addition, there were other elements I wasn’t seeing. Webserver configuration is something I am unfamiliar with and is something else on my plate that I don’t have time for.

So I went in search of a tutorial…for my tutorial.

And I found Teach Me Computer on Youtube. Nice and easy beginner scripting for PHP. Interestingly enough both teachers were using Notepad++. I use the licensed version of Sublime Text 2. Wrote a bunch of scripts and it was easy enough again. Making sure my files were in the right place so that the Apache would parse it.

In the meantime I installed Eclipse Standard 4.3.1 and Java 7 Update 45. Also geeking out on ObscuraCam, OTR secure chat applications, OrBot and watching Glenn Greenwald’s keynote on 30c3 at Saal 1.